On Sunday 12 February 2012, Timothy Pearson wrote:
> If TDE were to close down, which desktop would you use instead?  You would
> be allowed to abandon Linux entirely in this scenario. ;-)
>
> Please state why you have not already switched; i.e. what item are missing
> or suboptimal in the other environment.
>
> I am curious as to why TDE still exists and need some concrete examples to
> fall back on to counter detractors.
>

A lot was stated already and for most of the comments I could agree fully! 
Nevertheles here are my 2 cents as well.

I'm with KDE3 from the very beginning (and with KDE2 before). It was a big 
disappointment for me when I realized which way KDE4 was going to go  
starting with things like 
- dropping Konqueror in favor of Dolphin
- demanding from the users to switch to a desktop (KDE4)  with absolute
  reduced functionality
- banning users from the discussion list because they were no Fanboys of
  KDE4
- ...

I did not upgrade from Ubuntu Gutsy (was this the latest one with KDE3 
officially included in repos?) because I simply did not know which DE to use 
instead until I found TDE. I'm so glad KDE3 still exists.

I bought a netbook 3 years ago and I installed Ubuntu Lenny with Gnome2 as 
there was a netbook-edition available and there was nothing comparable 
available for KDE3. I got used to work with it but I'm not really happy with 
the lack of functionallity and the way it could be customized. I installed 
the next version (Maverick?) for a friend of mine again with the netbook 
edition and know what? even there you saw regression in Gnome2 (Nautilus no 
longer had the address text field available showing the path where you are 
(don't know the correct name for this)). With Gnome3, it's getting even 
worse.

At work I had to upgrade the Linux system to KDE4 2 years ago. A few guys were 
working via VNC on this system. What worked well on KDE3 for years was 
totally strange on KDE4. VNC server / client have been totally broken with 
the new graphics rendering of KDE4. I found Tiger-VNC program that helped a 
bit but I could net really got accustomed to KDE4. I now have upgraded to 
Lenny LTS and downgraded KDE4 to TDE happily!

For me, there is no alternative to KDE3 / TDE. If you really drop it I would 
try to use the existing version as long as possible.

Yes, there is room for improvement, e.g. the following 3 items come to mind:
- Konqueror more and more has problems to render actuall Web-pages, it
  would be very nice if we could switch from KHTML to Webkit as I don't
  think that the effort to renew KHTML libraries could be done.
- For using TDE on netbooks the screen size of a lot of dialogs is simply
  too big for the available screen estate and they can't be reduced. Bear in
  mind that especially netbooks could greatly take advantage from KDE3.
- What I find totally anoying is the way how self-mounted external devices
  are named. Instead of using simply the names you find by using the mount
  command (/media/something), you find some system:/media/other-thing!
  As I'm often still using the command line I can not simply copy the location
  out of Konquerors address bar but have instead to use mount to get it's
  correct location.

------------
As you easily see I'm no native speaker. I hope I was able to make myself at 
least understandable. I'd like to take the opportunity to say a big

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

to Tim and all the others who made Trinity a reality. Please go on with the 
good work!

A happy TDE user
Gerhard